Gary Hart on "The Front Runner", Politics Today and How "All the Rules Have Changed"

Gary Hart had a hectic life. "Oh man!" he's laughing. "Yes, I think it may be the least we can say of the day, much, much more hectic than I expected."

And when correspondent Rita Braver met with the former senator in Evergreen, Colorado, just a few miles from her home in Kittredge, they talked about some of the most tumultuous events, as depicted in a new film, "The Front Runner", which dates back to May 1987, when Gary Hart's presidential campaign was infernally derailed.

Braver asked, "What was it for you to have all this focused attention on that moment?"

"Very strange," answered Hart. "Imagine unexpectedly, someone came to you and said:" There is good and bad news: we want to make a film about you, but we want to make it the worst week of your life. "

It was the week when Miami Herald journalists, acting on a board, had settled in Washington at D. Hart's and met him meeting a young woman, Donna Rice, then that his wife was on the move.

Hart (played in the film by Hugh Jackman) spotted the journalists and confronted them.

That Sunday, the Herald published an article in which it was also reported that Hart and Rice had been together in Bimini, on a boat called Monkey Business.

Hart and Rice have always denied any sexual relationship. But the frenzy of media coverage forced Hart to withdraw from the race.

He told the assembled press, "I refuse to subject my family, friends, innocent people and myself to new rumors and gossip."

Hart reminded Braver, "I've also said:" If we take the path we started this week, we'll have the kind of leaders we deserve. "

"Have we?"

"Yes, you can not have rules applied to American politics and get quality people."

Gary Hart grew up in Ottawa, Kansas; graduated from Yale Law School; and settled in Colorado with his wife, Lee. But attracted by the public service by President Kennedy, he ended up managing the 1972 defeat of George McGovern.

Hart returned to Colorado, won a seat in the US Senate and led a distinguished career.

In 1983, claiming that the country did not need "caution," Hart was running for the Democratic nomination for the presidency. He lost to former vice president Walter Mondale, but became the Democratic leader for 1988 largely because of his visionary ideas.

"I've witnessed early on the change from America's manufacturing economic base to that of information and technology, symbolically from Detroit to Silicon Valley," he said. he declared.

"You were actually worried that we were headed for a war in the Persian Gulf and that no one is trying to spread the situation, especially in the face of terrorism," said Braver.

"Yes, or reduce our dependence on oil, so that meant conservation, but alternatives, renewables, and programs like that."

Hart was considered brilliant, but also a little distant. "I was not a traditional politician, "he said.

"Did not you like to be charming?" asked Braver.

"Because I found it very difficult!" he's laughing. "I'm not charming like Bill Clinton!"

"You basically thought that your privacy was your privacy and that no one had the right to examine it."

"But that has not been the case in America for 200 years?" he said. "Did not it happen, who changed the rules?"

There were long-standing rumors in Washington that Hart, who had lived through two separations from his wife, had engaged in extramarital affairs. A reporter asked Hart if he had ever been unfaithful in his marriage.

Hart and his wife returned to Colorado. Their two grown children live here too. But he was not hidden. Over the last 30 years, Hart has built an impressive resume: legal work, consulting, teaching, writing and diplomacy, with expertise in the field of terrorism. He even got a doctorate in Oxford's political thought. "I have tried to be active in the public service, that's why I got into politics," he said.

The story of Gary Hart's fall is considered a turning point, as the press begins to examine the privacy as well as the political ideas of the candidates.

In 1987, Hart warns: "We will all have to seriously question a system of selection of our national leaders that reduces the press of this country to hunters and presidential candidates who are hunted."

Yet Hart did not forget that Bill Clinton and Donald Trump were elected after business allegations.

"I think all the rules have changed," said Hart. "If Donald Trump can have a 30-40% fan base despite all that he has done in life, all bets are bad. No matter who can be president independently. "

Hart is about to turn 82 and admits he's still wondering if he could have changed the course of history.

Braver asked, "Does it haunt you a bit that you have not had the chance?"

"Of course," answered Hart. "It's been haunting me for 30 years, lost opportunities, because what turned out to be a little a newspaper's satisfaction with a sensational story, and was it worth it?"

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Story produced by Alan Golds.